This was the Simeon Tetlow of three years ago. Then there entered, one morning, in response to his summons for a call-boy, a short, square youth with a dull face. Simeon did not note him as he came in. He forgot that he had called for a boy. His mind was busy with projects of import. When it came back, with a start, he recognized that some one had been with him, for ten minutes or more, who had not worried and irritated him by merely being alive. He shot a keen glance at the dull face. The light of the eyes was turned to him, waiting to serve him.
After that Simeon summoned the boy again and again, on one pretext or another. He made excuses to see him. He advanced him from post to post.
At last, about a year ago, he nodded at a desk that had been installed, overnight, across the room: “You are to work there and your pay will be raised a hundred.”
The boy took possession of the desk with as little stir as if he had received some casual order. He did not ask what his work was to be, and Simeon Tetlow did not tell him. The big brain had found hands and feet—almost, it might seem, lungs and a few other useful, vital organs—and it used them, as it had used the nervous, shaking body before—relentlessly. For the first time in his life Simeon found his papers ready to his hand. He attended his first directors’ meeting, sitting at the head of the green baize table, like a man in a dream. The right paper slipped to his finger-tips and lingered there; the figures formed themselves in seemly ranks and marched up and down the green baize parade in orderly file. The effect upon the directors was, at first, a little startling. They had become wonted to Simeon hurried, gasping, and impatient—and to dividends. They were almost afraid of these cold facts and figures. They looked at them cautiously, through gold-rimmed glasses, received their dividends—and took heart.
Each day some new comfort found its way to Simeon’s desk. The morning that the box of elastic bands appeared there was a holocaust of joy among the papers. He used nearly the whole box the first day. He had never owned an elastic band before. He was president of the great corporation, but it had not occurred to him that he had a right to elastic bands. He slid them up and down his nervous fingers in sheer energy of delight. But he did not mention them to John, nor John to him. It was John who provided the new letter-file that cut the work in half, and had the grimy windows washed till they shone like plate, and arranged the desk ’phone so that Simeon could dictate to the stenographer three floors below, without knowing, or caring, who sat at the other end taking his crisp words with harried, compliant fingers. Hitherto, dictating had burdened Simeon’s life. He had written dozens of letters himself rather than endure the presence of a stenographer for even half an hour; and the sound of a girl clacking drove him wild.
The letters that were not dictated into the telephone were written in John’s round, conscientious-looking hand. If there were anything that one human being could do for another that was not done in the office, Simeon did not know what it was—nor did John. A clothes-brush that brushed them twice a day hung by Simeon’s hat and coat; and if Simeon’s neckties were still shabby and his collars a little frayed, it was because John had not yet discovered the remedy. Some days a luncheon appeared on Simeon’s desk, and some days he went out to luncheon; and he could not have told which, except that it was always the thing that he would have done had he devoted hours of thought to it all.
He did not give thanks to John, and John did not expect them. The lamps in his eyes had not been lighted for that—nor for money....
He went about the room now in his slow, considerate way, attending to each detail of locking up, as carefully as if he were not to be first on the ground in the morning.... He would return to start the day. Later—perhaps at noon—he would slip away. That would make least trouble.... To come in the morning and find him gone!—John felt, through all his short, square figure, the shock to the nervous, quivering one. He did not need to reason it out. He did not even know that he thought it. It was an instinct—born the first day he came into Simeon Tetlow’s office and saw the thin figure seated before its chaotic desk wrestling its way through mighty things.... He had thought of his mother as he stood there waiting for orders. She had fairly driven him away. “Go and be a man!” she had said; “I shall ruin you.” And she had smiled at him courageously.... And he had come away, and had taken the first thing at hand—a call-boy, kicking his heels against a bench with a dozen others. And this was his employer.... So he had stood waiting when Simeon Tetlow had looked up and seen the lamps aglow.
That was three years ago. And tonight Simeon, plodding home through the foggy gloom, was swearing a little under his breath.
“It ’s the weak spot in the boy,” he said testily; “I believe he’s soft at the core.”